MCAT horror stories

our proctor ended the verbal section 4 minutes early....but i was done with my passages. But i was surprised that nobody got up to ask her to check again.

She said many times that she was the "official timekeeper"

On an unrelated note, a kid was saying how he couldn't wait to get this out of the way, and how much suspense there was...then presented his slip WITHOUT the requisite photo of himself...

dc

Looks like I win so far;
3 words: SCHEDULED POWER OUTAGE



during the bs section, for about 45 minutes. The proctor was young and didin't know what to do. First, "Go outside" then, "No, nobody move.but you can talk" then, "No body talk"...Then he opened the door to let light in...luckily it was raining-this is cali, and we don't do well with rain- and made us start the bio section from where we let off with after 35minutes.. We used "solar power" for 10 minutes then the power came on...

To cap all that off, I did pi$$ poor on verbal and think I did bad on physics

When I took the MCAT, a repair guy came up to the building we were testing in and started banging on a bunch of pipes just outside the door during the verbal section (which i did the poorest on). To make matters worse, he had a walkie-talkie that squaked every thirty seconds. After the section, we went outside and told him to be quiet or there would be one less repair man in the world.

when i took the mcat last august, the air conditioner had gone out. we had about 150 people crammed into one room on a 90-degree humid new england day. my palms were already sweaty because i was nervous. the heat definitely didn't help.

A narcoleptic guy I know fell asleep during the Verbal section today. He just plunked out right on the open booklet with a pencil in his hand. The guy is sort of weird anyway. I'm surprised he didn't void on that one.

I'm sure one of you guys is thinking, "Why didn't one of you wake him up?" I wasn't sitting anywere near the guy, but the proctors knew what was going on and did nothing.

hmm, and to think i was annoyed at the 1.5 minutes I got shorted on PS

UseUrHeadFred said:

A narcoleptic guy I know fell asleep during the Verbal section today. He just plunked out right on the open booklet with a pencil in his hand. The guy is sort of weird anyway. I'm surprised he didn't void on that one.

I'm sure one of you guys is thinking, "Why didn't one of you wake him up?" I wasn't sitting anywere near the guy, but the proctors knew what was going on and did nothing.

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I feel bad b/c I shouldn't think that is funny

Don't worry. If you actually knew the guy, you'd think it was hilarious.

Nice new avatar, Cerb. Truth be told...the MCAT is one tough mother. I think you've got it correct this time I sure don't feel like anybody can own it (aside from the 9000 people on sdn who've claimed to have a 45T).

I've got a great almost-horror story from today's MCAT sitting. On 1pm the day before the MCAT (aka 19hrs before we were to report to the site), the administration informed us that they had changed the test site to another hotel on the east side of town. Then this morning, I got there and not only was there no clock in the room, when I asked the proctor if they had a timer, the guy gasped and went "that's what I forgot this morning!" Fortunately, my PR instructor had told us to always bring an extra timer for the proctor. That piece of advice was so worth the money I paid for the course - my test site probably would have lost 5 min or something in the sections otherwise!

PsychoLulu said:

when I asked the proctor if they had a timer, the guy gasped and went "that's what I forgot this morning!"

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Wow, that's really horrible. Nice move with the extra timer though

Syranope2 said:

when i took the mcat last august, the air conditioner had gone out. we had about 150 people crammed into one room on a 90-degree humid new england day. my palms were already sweaty because i was nervous. the heat definitely didn't help.

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Apparently you've never had the A/C go out on you during a hot humid summer day in Texas.

I drove down to the site the night before and decided to sleep at a Motel 6 (yes, I'm a cheap *******). While trying to sleep, I kept hearing the freeway traffic and people yelling constantly. I tried switching rooms but to no avail. Around 2am, I said enough (no refund )and drove until I found a nicer hotel. Found an ultra plush (expensive) place and was able to sleep soundly for all of 5 hours... Was well worth it though.

Oh, also forgot to mention - I went to bed at 11pm the night before... With a 6:30am scheduled wake up time, that gives me 8 solid hrs right? Well, not if I couldn't sleep, and tossed and turned until 3:30am! After I was *finally* asleep, I kept on being woken up by my bf, aka Champion Snoorer, between 3:30am - 4:30am. Of course, by 4:30, my cat had woken up, and decided to go through this whole routine of trying to get me to play with her. (Damnit, didn't she realize that I had a big ass play date with a bigger, badder "cat" in less than 2hrs?)

Result? Went into the test with less than 3 hrs of sleep, none of it REM. Thankfully, adrenaline & caffiene kept me alert not only during the whole test, but also till now (it's 3am the night of the test, and for some reason I am both awake AND sober.....)

premyo2002 said:

Looks like I win so far;
3 words: SCHEDULED POWER OUTAGE



during the bs section, for about 45 minutes. The proctor was young and didin't know what to do. First, "Go outside" then, "No, nobody move.but you can talk" then, "No body talk"...Then he opened the door to let light in...luckily it was raining-this is cali, and we don't do well with rain- and made us start the bio section from where we let off with after 35minutes.. We used "solar power" for 10 minutes then the power came on...

To cap all that off, I did pi$$ poor on verbal and think I did bad on physics

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At Pomona? Me too. Fortunately I only had about 20 questions left when it happened.

I took the test in August and needless to say it was very hot and humid in the room. Everyone was sweating to death. Throughout the PS section all we could hear was this banging noise. Come to find out it was the repair guys trying to fix the AC! They banged away throughout most of the test. I don't know if they ever got it fixed, but if they did it sure didn't help us any.

I hardly slept at all the night of my test as well. It really sucked.

PsychoLulu said:

Result? Went into the test with less than 3 hrs of sleep, none of it REM. Thankfully, adrenaline & caffiene kept me alert not only during the whole test, but also till now (it's 3am the night of the test, and for some reason I am both awake AND sober.....)

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I got roughly 3 hrs too. I went to bed at like 10 but every time I almost fell asleep I felt like I was suffocating and was going to die. It was pretty rough .

PsychoLulu said:

Oh, also forgot to mention - I went to bed at 11pm the night before... With a 6:30am scheduled wake up time, that gives me 8 solid hrs right? Well, not if I couldn't sleep, and tossed and turned until 3:30am! After I was *finally* asleep, I kept on being woken up by my bf, aka Champion Snoorer, between 3:30am - 4:30am. Of course, by 4:30, my cat had woken up, and decided to go through this whole routine of trying to get me to play with her. (Damnit, didn't she realize that I had a big ass play date with a bigger, badder "cat" in less than 2hrs?)

Result? Went into the test with less than 3 hrs of sleep, none of it REM. Thankfully, adrenaline & caffiene kept me alert not only during the whole test, but also till now (it's 3am the night of the test, and for some reason I am both awake AND sober.....)

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Ambien at 2030, worked great.

I took the MCAT at the Universiity of Oklahoma. We were in the building right next to the stadium, and Saturday was the red-and-white scrimmage for the Sooners. There was also a carnival with blaring music about 100 yards away from the building we were in. And I was in a classroom with outside walls facing both the concert and the stadium sitting right next to a window. The blaring music starting at about 10:00 am and we could hear every announcement from the football scrimmage all afternoon. Very distracting...I was ticked!

Thank goodness I didn't have to take it Saturday at the site I took it previously. This past Saturday they had a concert right across the street with 100 bands on 10 stages. It's called Fry St. Fair in Denton, TX. I couldn't imagine how niosy it was. The only good thing about it would be that after the test you can walk no less than 100yds and drink away your MCAT sorrows and listen to some killer bands.

flighterdoc said:

At Pomona? Me too. Fortunately I only had about 20 questions left when it happened.

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Yeah, I was pretty much done also, I was in a grove and wanted to keep going.

premyo2002 said:

Yeah, I was pretty much done also, I was in a grove and wanted to keep going.

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haha, you were in a grove! haha.

When I took the mcat last august the proctors told us ahead of time that there would be a large parade of Harley motorcycles going by at some time during the exam. Luckily they took another street but we still had 3 or 4 harleys at a time flying up the street every 15 to 20 minutes. It was briefly distracting but my guy skills (ie. ignoring things i'm not interested in) allowed me to stay focused on the wonderful verbal passages.

indo/ said:

When I took the mcat last august the proctors told us ahead of time that there would be a large parade of Harley motorcycles going by at some time during the exam. Luckily they took another street but we still had 3 or 4 harleys at a time flying up the street every 15 to 20 minutes. It was briefly distracting but my guy skills (ie. ignoring things i'm not interested in) allowed me to stay focused on the wonderful verbal passages.

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Let me guess...you were in Milwaukee during Harley's 100th aniversary?

Just before we started the BS, some guy comes into our room and asks if anyone parked in this certain parking lot. Apparently there was some big event and they set up tents practically over people's cars. There were 3 or 4 people who parked there so we got an extended 30 minute break. They told the testers to go repark their cars within 30 mins. I think that was the only "good" messup there could have been.

some obese mofo kept tapping his foot (paw) on the table. it was obvious he was just taking the mcat for the hell of it. couldnt focus with that beast gyrating the table...ugh. i told him to stop the tapping thing and moved seats before verbal...didnt want to risk the Leviathan's wrath

heat is always the case here in Louisiana, but try taking that bad boy in a room that feels like 40 below..... cold as a mofo = prime sleeping conditions

Remember -- A good friend will come and bail you out of jail... BUT,a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn...that was fun"

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SitraAchra said:

Just before we started the BS, some guy comes into our room and asks if anyone parked in this certain parking lot. Apparently there was some big event and they set up tents practically over people's cars. There were 3 or 4 people who parked there so we got an extended 30 minute break. They told the testers to go repark their cars within 30 mins. I think that was the only "good" messup there could have been.

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hmmm....were you in utc also?
if so then...ya it was one of my friends that had parked his car on mlk...also i hated that bit** with the cell phone. it went off twice during the bio section.

I posted this in another thread but I'll repost here because it applies.

During the April 2003 mcat in downtown chicago I had to deal with a street performer playing tv theme songs on a saxophone throughout the whole test. The test adminstrators shoved all the left handed people in a little offshoot of the testing room because that is where they had the left handed desks. The performer was playing directly outside of the little offshoot of the room, so the distraction primarily affected the left handed examinees. The test administrators asked him to stop, offering him 10 bucks. He took the money, then came back a few minutes later. The police were called, but they couldn't do anything about it because he had a valid street performer license.

Long story short, I bombed the test (28p). The lefties petitioned the MCAT program office to allow us the opportunity to retest within the next few weeks so we wouldn't be behind and disadvantaged in our application cycle. They said no. We then asked to get a refund or allow us to take the August one for free. They said no. They wouldn't do anything for us! Soooo frustrating. Anyway, I had to take the test again in Aug (at a suburban location), and did much better (34q).

I strongly suggest that you do NOT take the test a city colleges of chicago (downtown test location). If you take the test at UIC in August this year be sure that the test date is not the weekend of the air and water show because the jets fly right over the campus and are very loud. Just my advice. best of luck all future test takers.

I took all my practice tests at UIC this year. It was very distracting. One time, there was a huge convention of college socialists in the next conference room. Let's just say that college socialists are a loud lot. I heard about the sax guy last year from others - I feel for you.

I took it for real at Loyola last weekend. I highly recommend this location. They set you up in nice classrooms with plenty of room (about 20 per room) and it's very quiet, both inside the building and out. If you are taking it in Chicago, you might want to sign up there. I hear it goes fast, I wonder why.